Arctic Basin Transect: a project to survey the morphological and optical properties of the Arctic ice cover. By providing data to compare the current state of the ice cover with the historical record, this study will provide valuable information towards understanding the extent to which the Arctic sea ice cover is undergoing change.
Chukchi
Borderlands: An Arctic Crossroads Collection of new field
data will be combined with historical data in order to model
the entrance into the Arctic Ocean, an area 600 miles north
of the Bering Strait. The objective of the work is to analyze
the role this crossroads area plays both in the Arctic and
in world climate.
Circulation
in the Freshwater Switchyard of the Arctic Ocean A program
to study freshwater circulation (sea ice + upper ocean) in
the “freshwater switchyard” between Alert (Ellesmere Island)
and the N. Pole.
Evolution
of Exopolymers Aquatic substances, Exopolymers substances
(EPS), are found in all marine ecosystems. An investigation
will study the potential of EPS to alter the bulk properties
of sea ice by means of biological alteration of the sea ice
texture. Also being studied are the environmental conditions
that lead to high concentrations of EPS in sea ice and how
the magnitude and variability of EPS affects the natural desalination
of sea ice during an annual ice cycle.
High
Latitude Dynamics This program strives to understand the
physics of the high-latitude oceans, including their circulation
illuminate the role of the polar oceans in climate, identify
the links between physical mechanisms and the biology and
chemistry of the high-latitude marine environment and achieve
a mechanistic understanding of the variability of cold oceans
and lakes.
IABP
International Arctic Buoy Program. A network of automatic
data buoys used for monitoring synoptic-scale fields of pressure,
temperature, and ice motion.
Landfast
Ice. This program studies the long-term contribution of
landfast ice to the Arctic freshwater budget.
The North
Pole Environmental Observatory, an international research
team supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) will
establish a camp at the North Pole in April 2000 to lay the
groundwork for a five-year project to take the pulse of the
Arctic Ocean and learn how the world's northernmost sea helps
regulate global climate.
Polar Climate Change, a project to investigate 20th and 21st century climate change in the polar regions.
Polar
Science Center Hydrographic Climatology (PHC). The goal
of this project is to produce a global hydrographic climatology
that includes a good description of the Arctic Ocean and its
environs.
Projections of an Ice-Diminished Arctic Ocean, The goals of this project are 1) to understand the large-scale changes that have occurred in sea ice and the upper Arctic Ocean between 1948 and 2003, and 2) to project a diminished arctic sea-ice cover with multiple warming scenarios.
The
Radarsat Geophysical Processor System (RGPS), currently
under development at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with funding
from NASA, will use weekly synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
imagery of the entire Arctic Ocean, acquired by the Canadian
Radarsat satellite, to automatically produce gridded fields
of sea ice motion, thickness distribution of new ice, and
other data projects.
SEARCH, the Study of Environmental Arctic Change, is a new program
emerging in response to significant changes observed in the
Arctic. A Study of Arctic Change Workshop was held in November
of 1997 to explore the extent of recent changes observed in
the Arctic and to consider a program to study it further.
Over 70 oceanographers, atmospheric scientists, and sea ice
experts attended.
